After four-decades of the Episcopal Church and the U.S. Government working together, the Episcopal Church announced May 12 that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by the Trump administration.
In a letter sent to members of the church, Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”
The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated opponent of apartheid.
“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”
In addition to ties with Tutu, the Episcopal Church has a long history of advocating against apartheid in South Africa. It first began altering its financial holdings in the region in 1966, and by the mid-1980s, the church voted to divest from companies doing business in South Africa.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the Episcopal Church’s decision “raises serious questions about its supposed commitment to humanitarian aid.” She argued “Afrikaners [are] “no less deserving of refugee resettlement than the hundreds of thousands of others who were allowed into the United States during the past Administration.”
The Trump administration has otherwise all but frozen the refugee program, with Afrikaners among the few — and possibly only — people granted entry as refugees since January. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that essentially halted the refugee program and stopped payments to organizations that assist with refugee resettlement.
Afrikaners are white South Africans of Dutch descent. Rick Santos, head of Church World Service, one of 4 resettlement groups suing the government, said in a statement, “We are concerned that the U.S. Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement…By resettling this population, the Government is demonstrating that it still has the capacity to quickly screen, process, and depart refugees to the United States. It’s time for the Administration to honor our nation’s commitment to the thousands of refugee families it abandoned with its cruel and illegal executive order.”
It is noticeable that the Trump Administration seems unconcerned with Queer, Trans, Black and Brown refugees while making white people of European descent a priority. What must the Queer God Squad think of that?
